Puzzles in Games - In here is a tragedy...art thou gonna cry??

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Puzzles in Games - In here is a tragedy...art thou gonna cry??

rox: Sep 7, 2016

SPOILERS ABOUND :siren:

I don't want this thread to just be a sea of black bars, so just letting you all know what you're getting into up front. Please put the title of the game you're talking about in somewhere near the top of your post so anyone who wants to avoid reading potential spoilers can simply scroll past!

IF YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT HAVING PUZZLES SPOILED FOR YOU IN THE PUZZLE THREAD ABOUT PUZZLES, THEN I DONT KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU, BUDDY!!!

:siren:

SPOILERS ABOUND :siren:

Now with that out of the way, let's get on to:

What makes a good puzzle? This question has been on my mind recently, particularly in regards to Video Games. From simple block pushing puzzles ala Sokoban, to making a moustache out of cat hair to impersonate someone who doesn't even have a moustache, they are one of the most prevalent and popular forms of interaction in the medium next to popping heads with Sweet 360 No Scopes. A good puzzle can make a great game even better, while a bad puzzle can be incredibly frustrating and bring the entire experience down. This thread is for both of those extremes and everything in between!

YOU DO NOT NEED TO WRITE A MILLION WORDS TO PARTICIPATE!

Now you may be saying to yourself "Isn't there already a Puzzle Game thread?" Why yes! Yes there is, located here! So then what's the point of this thread?

What this thread is:

Appreciation of puzzles in general
Discussion of puzzle design and what makes a good/bad puzzle
Talking about games that aren't necessarily "puzzle games" strictly speaking, but do contain memorable puzzles that you want to share
Posting your favourite clever/bizarre/awful puzzles with at least a brief reason why you like it beyond "its cool/it sucks"
Spoiler posting is encouraged! It's hard to talk about what you like about a puzzle if you have to talk around the dang thing. Also, threads filled with nothing but spoiler tags look awful so don't say I didn't warn you! If you want to talk about puzzle games you like in a broader spoiler-free sense, the Puzzle Games Megathread may be what you're after

What this thread isn't:

How do I solve (x) puzzle in (y) game? (Try searching the subforum! There's tons of dedicated threads for individual titles, and if there isn't one, why not make your own? Failing that there's always GameFAQs I guess)
A place to get mad about puzzle spoilers
A place to flame people for finding puzzles harder than you (yes we know you're a genius, cool your hot head, pal)
Your Wordle liveblog

I want this to be a chill thread in general so as long as you try to stick roughly to the guidelines above things will be just fine. If I end up having to add more "guidelines" then something has gone terribly wrong and shame on you all.

Not everybody will agree with me about my Very Correct Puzzle Opinions, and I wanna hear from you about yours! As I said at the top, you don't have to write a million words like I ~~did~~ am about to do to participate, but pretty please put a little bit of effort in and post some of your favourite puzzles!

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 23:31

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:12

rox: Sep 7, 2016

I'll start us off with the thread's namesake:

Silent Hill 3: The Shakespeare Anthology Puzzle <Hard Riddle Difficulty>

EDIT: it has been pointed out to me by forums poster Discendo Vox (thx!) that there is an excellent Silent Hill 3 LP by none other than Forums Treasure VoidBurger that not only explains this puzzle (and all the others in the game!) way better than i did here, but she actually got to interview the original translator of all the unvoiced text in the game (including every puzzle!), Nora Stevens Heath, and they go over all the things that were, well, lost in translation due to lack of context or misinterpretation!

my explanation below is actually NOT the intended way to solve the puzzle which is just absolutely hilarious to me

so no, this puzzle (and the later ones) were never meant to be this difficult or confusing, however i feel that doesnt detract from my point about outside information being required for this particular puzzle. i will leave my original post here for posterity, but i highly, highly recommend watching at least this video from VoidBurgers LP to get a much better idea of whats going on here!

also she uses clips of various high school students reenactments of the plays and it, frankly, owns. also also i feel vindicated by the fact that VB also only knew Othello from the board game lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoiRxrO8o9A

original post follows below 👇

Hoo boy. A rather infamous puzzle from what is generally regarded to be the entry with the most difficult "riddles" in the Silent Hill series. For those not in the know, Silent Hill 2 and 3 feature "riddle" difficulty levels that are chosen independently from the combat or "action" difficulty setting. These settings will affect all of the major puzzles in the game. Silent Hill 2 has 4 of them (Easy, Normal, Hard, and Extra), while 3 has, well, 3 (Easy, Normal, and Hard)

At the end of the first mall segment about 15-20 minutes or so into SH3, you acquire a key to the 2nd floor bookstore, "My Bestsellers".

Inside, at the back of the store you'll find a door locked with a 4 digit keypad.

Depending on your riddle difficulty, there may be a note here. In one of the aisles, a bunch of books have fallen off a shelf. 2 on Easy, 5 on Normal and Hard. They are labelled 'Shakespeare Anthology' Volumes 1-5. On Easy, only 1 and 3 will be here.

In Silent Hill 3, Easy typically gives you the answer outright with minimal involvement required. In this case, you simply have to place the 2 books given back on the shelf and you'll find the randomly generated keypad combo scrawled across the spines of the books. That's it. Nothin' fancy!

Normal is the slightest increase in difficulty, with the clues being fairly spelled out for you. This time there is a memo by the door that reads:

My Bestsellers Management posted:

Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Put these books out of order.

No points for guessing what you do here. Placing the books back on the shelf you'll notice like on Easy there is a code scrawled across the spines, but this time, you gotta put the books out of order to reveal the randomly generated code. Simple...

...and then there's Hard which will throw a fuckin' poem at you and require some out of the box thinking.

My Bestsellers Management posted:

"In here is a tragedy---
art thou player or audience?
Be as it may, the end doth remain:
all go on only toward death.

The first words at thy left hand:
a false lunacy, a madly dancing man.
Hearing unhearable words, drawn
to a beloved's grave---and there,
mayhap, true madness at last.

As did this one, playing at death,
find true death at the last.
Killing a nameless lover, she
pierced a heart rent by sorrow.

Doth lie invite truth?
Doth verity but wear the
mask of falsehood?
Ah, thou pitiful, thou
miserable ones!

Still amidst lies, though the end
cometh not, wherefore yearn
for death?
Wilt thou attend to thy beloved?
Truth and lies, life and death:
a game of turning white to black
and black to white.

Is not a silence brimming with
love more precious than flattery?
A peaceful slumber preferred to
a throne besmirched with blood.

One vengeful man
spilled blood for two;
Two youths shed tears for three;
Three witches disappeared thusly;
And only the four keys remain.

Ah, but verily...
In here is a tragedy---
art thou player or audience?
There is nothing which cannot
become a puppet of fate or an
onlooker, peering into the cage."

That's uh, quite the step up. This time you'll notice the anthologies are all labelled with the name of a play in addition to their volume number.

I - Romeo and Juliet
II - King Lear
III - Macbeth
IV - Hamlet
V - Othello

Each stanza of the poem corresponds to one of the plays, and you gotta figure out which one goes where.

quote:

In here is a tragedy---
art thou player or audience?
Be as it may, the end doth remain:
all go on only toward death.

Just some intro flavour, moving on!

quote:

The first words at thy left hand:
a false lunacy, a madly dancing man.
Hearing unhearable words, drawn
to a beloved's grave---and there,
mayhap, true madness at last.

The first bit is setting up that the answer will read left-to-right in the order presented. The rest of the stanza is describing the plot of Hamlet. (4????)

quote:

As did this one, playing at death,
find true death at the last.
Killing a nameless lover, she
pierced a heart rent by sorrow.

The climax of Romeo and Juliet is being referred to here. (41???)

quote:

Doth lie invite truth?
Doth verity but wear the
mask of falsehood?
Ah, thou pitiful, thou
miserable ones!

This one is the vaguest in my opinion (out of the plays I was previously familiar with), but I'm also far from being a Shakespeare buff and did terribly in school, so. I believe it's referring to the deception perpetrated by Macbeth and his wife, as well as the misconception he has about the witches' prophecies. (413??)

quote:

Still amidst lies, though the end
cometh not, wherefore yearn
for death?
Wilt thou attend to thy beloved?
Truth and lies, life and death:
a game of turning white to black
and black to white.

Having never read or seen Othello, I only knew this one because I've played the board game lol. (4135?)

quote:

"Is not a silence brimming with
love more precious than flattery?
A peaceful slumber preferred to
a throne besmirched with blood."

That just leaves the final play, King Lear. never read or seen this one either, but from what I understand, it's a fairly accurate description. The daughter who actually does love the king refuses to resort to flattery for the throne, and they all ultimately meet untimely ends. Tragedy is the name of the game after all. (41352)

But wait! Once you've figured that all out, you're gonna have a 5 digit number and as I mentioned earlier, the panel only accepts 4 digit codes. Well that's where the 7th stanza comes in:

quote:

One vengeful man
spilled blood for two;
Two youths shed tears for three;
Three witches disappeared thusly;
And only the four keys remain.

The first line here refers to Hamlet, which is the 4th Volume. In his quest for revengeance, he spills blood for himself and his father. So we multiply. (4x2)

The second line is about Romeo and Juliet (Volume 1) mourning poor Mercutio and presumably themselves. (1x3)

Finally the 3 witches of Macbeth disappear, so we remove the Volume entirely. You know, instead of a 0 which the keypad clearly has... (3-3)

This leaves us with the final code 8352 and now we can go meet Claudia and access the helevator to the otherworld. Very kind of the bookstore manager to leave such an easy clue for any employees who forget the code to the breakroom.

---

Now, I don't think the bookstore puzzle is the hardest in the game (for me when I played this as a kid it was that friggin' hospital door) but it certainly is the most divisive.

The problem with this puzzle IMO (besides there being a 0 on the keypad :waycool:

) is the fact that it requires outside knowledge to solve. That is, unlike the Weird-rear end Serial Killer Love Letter Puzzle later in the game, the player cannot figure out the answer solely with the information given in-game.

Some people like this kinda puzzle as it rewards certain players by making them feel clever when they know the particular bit of trivia the designer had in mind. Personally I'm not a huge fan of this approach to puzzle design, as I tend to find it boring to have to resort to internet searching especially when it's likely the puzzle solution will come up in your results anyways (looking at you Secret World. cool idea in that game because it's thematically appropriate but sadly suffers from the aforementioned problem)

---

For some contrast, I'd like to talk about the kind of puzzle design I do love, in perhaps an unlikely place:

(Most of) The Whole Dang Hitman Series

Not going to talk about any one level in particular (at least not in this post lol) but the Hitman series--particularly the modern World of Assassination Trilogy and 2006's Blood Money--contains some of my favourite puzzles in gaming. Now you may not traditionally think of Hitman as a puzzle game, but it very much is to me!

Every single level is like a gigantic puzzle box filled with numerous creative and deadly solutions. You are typically given a simple goal for each hit; eliminate the target(s), procure any items of interest the client has requested, escape. How you do it and whether or not you do so undetected is up to you! Wanna go in guns a-blazing? There's a solution for that. Disguise yourself as a confidant of the target and choke them out in the bathroom? You bet. Make every single death look like an unfortunate accident? You better believe it! Dress-up in a fursuit and detonate a remote mine in a briefcase the target is expecting?

No Alerts, Suit Only, Silent Assassin?

There's hundreds of ways to accomplish each hit, and if you can think of it, you can probably do it. One of the gravest Gaming Sins to me, is figuring out a solution to a puzzle that absolutely -should- work, but it's not exactly what the designer had in mind, so tough luck pal! Hitman rarely suffers from this problem and getting creative with your solutions can be incredibly fun and adds tons of replayability.

<image credits lol>

rox fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Feb 3, 2022

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 23:31

rox: Sep 7, 2016

Kerrzhe posted:

monster hunter world: iceborne introduced these treasure hunt puzzles which required you to have excellent knowledge of all the little details in each map, that got progressively harder as you went through each puzzle series.

i only had to look up the answer to one (always look up, folks) but managed to solve the other 59 on my own! it's still my rarest achievement on my steam profile.

thats really cool!

i love treasure hunts and puzzles that reward you for exploring and becoming intimately familiar with all the little intricacies and hidey holes of a given area

scaling difficulty is a big plus too, if theyre all equally difficult then they can feel more like a chore than like youre building to a big reward

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 01:02

rox: Sep 7, 2016

cheetah7071 posted:

I'm a big fan of the style of puzzle, prominent in Myst though probably not a strict majority, which is just "figure out how to work this machine without a user manual"

like you just sit down in a chair and there's a device in front of you that looks like this:

what does it do? what can you accomplish with it? If you've been read the journal entries scattered throughout the area you probably have a good idea what this device is, but the game never explicitly tells you. And you still gotta figure out the controls the hard way, by pressing buttons and seeing what happens. And your goal isn't obvious either. If I recall correctly, the puzzle this screenshot is from isn't solvable just from the information you get while interacting with it (other than by brute force). You have to understand what this is, what you're trying to do, and combine that with the notes in the journal entries describing how other characters have been experimenting with the device (with more free time on their hands than you presumably have to brute force answers) to get anywhere.

i love these kinda puzzles too! especially if you come across them early in the game and then spend a long time exploring and solving other puzzles with it lingering in your mind until you have all the pieces you need to go back and solve it

i find that super satisfying

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 01:06

rox: Sep 7, 2016

TheRecogScene posted:

This is my favorite kind of sliding tile puzzle. One of my study halls in middle school had one called Road Rage, I think, that was themed around cars, and had 60 cards of increasing difficulty telling you how to place the blocks. I didn't know these was a proper name for it, and now I suspect it will be a lot easier to find variants. Thanks!

i played this one at summer camp once! its called Rush Hour!

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 04:49

rox: Sep 7, 2016

TheRecogScene posted:

I accept that I'm relatively new to the world of cryptic crosswords/puzzles and these tricks that other people seem to be able to recognize, but my brain just refuses to internalize the idea that this part of the puzzle is any way acceptable. It seems like an impossible leap. I guess the way you would figure it out would be to get to the point where you have too many numbers and realize the stanza you haven't used yet must mean something, and eventually try this. But it feels more confusing and off-putting than clever, to me.

honestly it sucks lol

i much prefer the rest of the puzzles in SH3. even knowing youve chosen Hard Mode, it's honestly baffling that its 20 minutes into the game. ridiculous.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 04:52

rox: Sep 7, 2016

Discendo Vox posted:

I like the idea of SH having a hard puzzle mode that's extremely difficult, and I actually think needing outside knowledge is a plausible thing, if you really want to commit to it...but...

Voidburger's fantastic Let's Play of SH3 includes detailed commentary on each of the Hard puzzles, and best of all she got the chance to have extended conversations with the original translator. It turns out a couple of the puzzles are just bugged or have translation issues, and the explanations the playerbase came up with are completely orthogonal to the intended solutions. It's been awhile and I can't remember the details, but I know the face=keypad puzzle from the hospital was one of these. The linked playlist has the other videos that go into them- it looks like the Cock Robin puzzle was also in that category.

omg i'm gonna go watch this rn, thx so much!

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 06:12

rox: Sep 7, 2016

Discendo Vox posted:

At some point I can write up some effort for this thread on Jonathan Blow's profound influence on puzzle design and devotion to a concept I call "conservation of detail" (don't buy his games though, the dude is cancelled for incredibly good reasons). I can also write up a lot of on the ARGs that were developed for payday the heist and payday 2 when I have some time.

yes please!! i would be super interested in reading both of those things!

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 06:27

rox: Sep 7, 2016

lmao i'm gonna have to write an addendum edit to my post after i finish watching this lp

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 06:44

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 03:12

rox: Sep 7, 2016

i have edited my post about That Fuckin Shakespeare Puzzle to include the info helpfully provided by Discendo Vox about VoidBurger and Nora Stevens Heath talking about Silent Hill 3! absolutely worth watching the video for the high school student reenactments of shakespeare plays alone, but just a terrific lp all around. thx VoidBurger 🙏 💜

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoiRxrO8o9A

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 19:25

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